After Trump’s revelations, India has no choice but to face harsh questions about its nuclear posture.
New Delhi: The fragile foundations of the 21st century’s nuclear non-testing norm have been shattered. The autumn 2025 announcements by US President Donald Trump, alleging that China, Russia, and even Pakistan have been conducting clandestine nuclear tests, have been chillingly substantiated.
The subsequent confirmation from the CIA, asserting that both Beijing and Moscow have engaged in “super-critical nuclear weapons tests”—thereby exceeding the “zero-yield” standard that underpins the global moratorium—has plunged the world into a new and dangerous strategic era.
For India, this revelation is not a distant great power dispute; it is an existential crisis. It forces New Delhi to confront its own quarter-century-old, self-imposed moratorium on nuclear testing—a policy that has been a cornerstone of its identity as a responsible nuclear power. The new global reality—where adversaries are actively modernizing their arsenals with new explosive tests while India relies on 1998 data—has poured gasoline on a smouldering, unresolved fire at the very heart of the Indian strategic establishment.
This is the first of a three-part series on India’s critical nuclear dilemma, and why the future looks bleak unless strong choices are made. This dilemma is not new, but the stakes have never been higher. The central, agonizing question—is India’s deterrent truly credible?—must now be answered.
This essay will analyse India’s stark choice, tracing its roots to the profound, unresolved ambiguities of the 1998 Pokhran-II tests and framing it through the two diametrically opposed strategic philosophies that define the modern Indian debate: the “maximalist” school, championed by Bharat Karnad, and the “sufficiency” school, represented by Manpreet Sethi.
To understand India’s present dilemma, one must return to the searing heat of May 1998. When India conducted its five “Shakti” nuclear tests at Pokhran, it declared unqualified success. The series included a fission device, sub-kiloton devices, and, most critically, a thermonuclear device (TD), or H-bomb. Immediately following the tests, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee declared a unilateral moratorium on further testing—a deft diplomatic move that signalled responsibility and helped India weather the storm of international sanctions.
This moratorium became the bedrock of India’s nuclear doctrine: “Credible Minimum Deterrence” based on “No First Use.” For over a decade, this narrative of complete success was the official, unassailable truth.
This changed in 2009. K. Santhanam, a senior DRDO scientist and the field director for the 1998 test site preparations, dropped a bombshell. He publicly stated that the thermonuclear test was a “fizzle.” Santhanam’s claim was that the test’s yield was far lower than the 45 kilotons (KT) the establishment had claimed—perhaps as low as 20–25 KT.
The implication was horrifying: the fission “trigger” for the H-bomb worked, but the secondary fusion stage—the part that gives an H-bomb its city-destroying power—failed to ignite properly. In short, India had not successfully validated its H-bomb design.
The scientific establishment, led by names like Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Dr R. Chidambaram, responded with a furious rebuttal. They insisted the tests were a complete success, that the yields were exactly as stated, and that any seismic discrepancies were due to the geological uniqueness of the Pokhran site.
The government backed them, and the debate was officially silenced—but the ambiguity became a permanent “ghost” in India’s strategic closet.
If Santhanam was right, India’s “credible deterrent” against China was a catastrophic bluff. A fission bomb is sufficient to deter Pakistan, but deterring a vast, continent-sized nation like China requires the proven, massive destructive power of high-yield (megaton-class) thermonuclear weapons. Without a proven TD, India’s missiles are armed with popguns against an adversary armed with cannons.
This is the unresolved question that haunts New Delhi. And the 2025 revelations—that China is now perfecting new designs via super-critical testing, while India is still arguing about its first—have made this ambiguity strategically untenable.
For no one has the 2025 news been more validating than for Bharat Karnad, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and the high priest of India’s “maximalist” or “expansionist” school of nuclear thought.
For decades, Karnad has railed against what he sees as the “timid” and “dangerously naive” consensus of the New Delhi establishment. Karnad’s philosophy is rooted in hard realism: nuclear weapons are not just political tools for deterrence; they are instruments of state power, escalation dominance, and, ultimately, war-fighting. He argues that India’s “minimum” deterrent is, in fact, “self-deterrence,” a posture so weak and timid that it invites aggression from China.
The 2025 revelations are, for Karnad, an “I-told-you-so” moment of profound significance. He would argue that while India virtuously tied its own hands with a moratorium, its adversaries—China, Russia, and Pakistan—were never so foolish. They viewed the post-1998 era not as a time for restraint but as a golden opportunity to get ahead.
The CIA’s confirmation of “super-critical” tests proves that China has been actively testing and perfecting new, sophisticated, and reliable warhead designs, while India has been clinging to a 27-year-old, possibly failed design.
Karnad’s argument for testing is threefold:
Validate the H-Bomb: He seized on Santhanam’s 2009 claims as absolute proof that the H-bomb “fizzled.” He argues it is national suicide to base the country’s survival on a failed experiment. India must test a series of high-yield thermonuclear devices (in the 200–500 KT range) until it gets them right.
Reject Simulation: He scoffs at the establishment’s claim that computer simulations are a substitute for full-scale explosive testing. As he has argued, simulation is garbage-in, garbage-out. To build a reliable model, one needs real-world test data—which India, in his view, does not have.
Build a True Triad: A credible triad (land, air, and sea) requires a range of warheads—small, tactical weapons for battlefield use and massive, high-yield “city-busters” for strategic deterrence. India, he argues, has proven neither.
This brings us to Karnad’s criticism of Santhanam—a nuanced point. Karnad did not criticise Santhanam’s scientific claim; he championed it as “remarkable” and courageous. His critique was aimed at the system and establishment that Santhanam was part of.
His critique was that:
Santhanam waited too long—he and other scientists knew the truth in 1998 but remained silent for over a decade.
The establishment’s “impenetrable nexus” of DRDO and AEC bosses “lied” to the nation to protect reputations and budgets.
Declaring a moratorium despite ambiguous results was, in Karnad’s words, “mindless irresponsibility.”
In the 2025 context, Karnad’s prescription would be clear, immediate, and brutal: abandon the moratorium today. Announce a series of tests to validate a high-yield H-bomb and develop tactical nuclear weapons. Accept international sanctions as the necessary, short-term price for securing India’s long-term survival.
Diametrically opposed to Karnad is the “sufficiency” or “moderate” school, personified by Manpreet Sethi, a distinguished fellow at the Centre for Air Power Studies. For this school, nuclear weapons are fundamentally political tools, not military ones. Their sole purpose is to deter nuclear use and blackmail—not to “win” a nuclear war, which they view as an oxymoron.
Sethi and other “restraint” proponents build their case on a different interpretation of 1998 and a different view of global politics.
Her response to the Santhanam controversy is to dismiss it as an academic distraction. In her view, the 1998 tests were sufficient—they proved India’s capability to design and detonate a range of nuclear devices. The exact yield of the H-bomb is irrelevant to a political strategist. What matters is ambiguity.
An adversary—namely China—cannot be 100% sure that the H-bomb failed. That sliver of doubt—that India might possess a weapon of mass destruction—is the entire basis of deterrence. Testing again, she argues, is not only unnecessary but deeply counterproductive.
In the face of the 2025 revelations, Sethi’s school would argue for extreme caution, warning that a knee-jerk reaction (i.e., testing) would be catastrophic.
Political Catastrophe: Resuming testing would instantly shatter India’s hard-won image as a responsible nuclear power. It would make India a pariah, inviting crippling sanctions from partners like the US and Quad members.
Strategic Destabilization: An Indian test would trigger tit-for-tat responses from Pakistan and embolden China—locking South Asia in an unwinnable arms race.
Doctrinal Strength: Sethi defends the “No First Use” (NFU) policy, arguing it reflects supreme confidence and stabilizes the region by reducing “use-it-or-lose-it” pressures.
In 2025, Sethi’s prescription would be to refuse to be baited. China’s tests, while troubling, do not change the core logic of deterrence. India’s existing fission arsenal is “sufficient” to inflict unacceptable damage on any adversary. The correct response, she says, is not to follow others into explosive testing but to strengthen survivability—through ballistic missile submarines, hardened silos, and better reconnaissance.
In subsequent parts of this series, we shall explore how nuclear dynamics have changed—and are changing—dramatically around the world, and why India has no choice but to face up to the challenges thrown up by a global nuclear order in increasing disarray.
—Hindol Sengupta is Professor of International Relations at O.P. Jindal Global University and Director of the University’s India Institute.
